UDOIT 2.7.0 "Frostproof"

[tr_jbates]

This release is focused on improving the user experience.  Cidi Labs contributed most of the code for this release in response to requests from their customers, and we are extremely grateful for this contribution.  If you are attending CanvasCon next week, please visit them at their virtual booth!

Now, on to the changes.  The first one you will notice is that the Content and Scan for lists have been moved into an accordion widget titled Scanning Options.  The widget is positioned above the Scan This Course button in order to closely follow the layout of previous versions of UDOIT.

The New UDOIT Home Screen

When the scan is complete, the Welcome to UDOIT! and Scanning Options boxes will collapse, conserving vertical space.

Screenshot showing how the interface collapses after a scan

The report view has changed significantly.  Each section of the course where errors or suggestions were found will be listed on the left side.  The section selected when the scan completes is the Summary, which allows the user to show or hide all errors or suggestions or individual errors or suggestions in the report.

Screenshot showing the report filtering interface with some errors hidden

Selecting the Pages item in the left menu shows the portion of the report related to Pages.  The interface should be familiar from this point on.

Screenshot of the Pages section of the report

The Unscannable Files section now detects more types of unscannable files.  These file types are customizable, so you can add to or remove from to the defaults if you so desire.

Screenshot of the new file types added to the Unscannable Files section

Upgrade Instructions

• Download UDOIT version 2.7.0
• Test in a development or QA environment, not on production.
• If you are still using PHP 7.1 or below, you must upgrade to 7.2 or 7.3.
• If you're coming from a version older than 2.6.3:
  • (Self-Hosted) Update your localConfig.php file to make sure it's up to date with localConfig.template.php
  • (Heroku-Hosted) Update your Config Vars to include the new variables
  • back up your database and run "php composer.phar migrate"
• Run "php composer.phar install"
• (Heroku-Hosted) Follow the instructions in HEROKU.md

Features Added

• Added ability to filter the report by error/suggestion type and view a single content section at a time. Thanks Cidi Labs! #498
• Reworked the the way unlisted/private/deleted YouTube/Vimeo videos are handled. Now they show up in their own Suggestion instead of being marked for manual inspection in other Errors or Suggesions. #547
• Added documentation for which folders need to be writeable by your webserver #548
• Updated Quail to support all types of table structures #488
• Unscannable File extensions are now configurable #474

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed a memory usage issue with the Most Common Errors report in the Admin Panel #502
• Cleaned up some old YouTube-related code from lib/UdoitUtils.php #491
• Fixed issue where tables with <p> tags in them prevent U FIX IT from working #488
• Large images no longer break out of the bounds of the preview pane. #451
• Floated images no longer float out of the bounds of the preview pane. #449

Side note:  I tried to add proper headings to this post, but this software does not allow heading tags.  If you have any issues navigating the content of this post, please let me know.

[govreacl]

Is anyone else having an issues installing 2.7 and getting it to scan a course?  We keep getting a "failed to scan this course" error.

[mtuten]

@govreacl I posted about the failure to scan already in the UDOIT information topic. @ashlib seems to also be having that issue.

At my institution, we've had scan failure issues for multiple versions of UDOIT. I didn't really share information about this experience with UDOIT developers up until this point because I thought it was an issue with our installation (which a colleague in a different department manages).

The workaround we've been using is to tell folks to run the scan, open "View Old Reports," and click on the top row to access the results. U Fix It buttons will not work but the results are all there.

When the scan failure showed up in 2.7.0, I did some more thorough testing. I discovered that if I unpublished specific pages, and then scanned only the published pages, I could get the scan to succeed. I was unable to determine the common denominator between the pages that could not be scanned. I then attempted to break every rule that UDOIT supposedly looks for (I say supposedly because I've historically gotten UDOIT to generate a couple of results that weren't listed in the "What UDOIT looks for" reference sheet). I found myself unable to trigger "Multimedia objects should have text equivalents," "No alternative text found," "Avoid animated GIFs," and "The test equivalents (e.g. transcripts and/or captions)..." but otherwise didn't experience failure to scan. I've sent Jacob the HTML of one of the pages that failed to scan so that he could test further. He also told me that our institution needed a larger quota on our Google API, which my colleague is slowly working on.

[cgaudreau]

@mtuten @govreacl I stumbled here this morning, as we're having the same issue of failed scans.

After working with our IT department, who manages the server install (we're not on Heroku), wanted to point you to the resolution they noted and issue posted to the UDOIT GitHub page: Issue with Udoit.php and unscannable file types #594 

Subsequently, and after running two scans, confirmed this was a temporary fix. Should it break again, we'll reopen the case and will post any resolutions here.